The International Situation and the Red Army

V. Building the Air Fleet

Order No.2545

By the Revolutionary War Council of the USSR’ November 23, 1923, No.2545, Moscow

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One year ago today the Academy of the Air Fleet was established. It had to develop its activity almost from scratch, under the exceptionally difficult conditions left behind by the period of the imperialist slaughter and the intense civil war.

These general conditions told especially heavily upon aviation, as a sphere in which comparatively little research had been done, and at the same time one in which, because of the boundless prospects opening before it, substantial forces and resources were called for.

Precisely in recent years aviation has made very great advances, strengthening its role in economic and cultural construction and at the same time steadily moving into a front-rank place as a weapon of war.

The peoples of the Soviet Union have demonstrated strikingly enough their will to overtake the most advanced countries in the sphere of aviation, and to do this in as short a time as possible. The Academy of the Air Fleet was called upon to guide this will of the whole people, arming it with the instrument of science and showing it the shortest and most reliable way to fruition.

The most immediate task of the Soviet Union and, consequently, of its Academy, in the field of aviation, must be to create a sound scientific and practical leading nucleus for the building of Red aviation by means of our own forces and resources and for working out air tactics, in constant accord with the tactics of the Red Army and the Red Navy.

We have to educate sound cadres of proletarian aircraft engineers and technicians’ capable of taking part in the economic construction of our country, ready at the moment of danger selflessly to defend the air approaches to the workers’ and peasants’ stronghold with the new weapon which science and experiment has put into their hands.

Greeting the Academy of the Air Fleet named after Professor Zhukovsky [1], on its first anniversary, the Revolutionary War Council of the USSR expects that its leaders and students will continue with their energetic and sustained work for the building of the Red air forces.

Endnotes

1. N.Ye. Zhukovsky (1847-1921), one of the pioneers of aviation. In 1904 he headed the first institute of aerodynamics in Europe, at Kuchino, near Moscow